Removal

Yolanda Chois Rivera

| Ghana |

We sit on the floor of the room. The house is located in Kumasi, Ghana, inside a compound — typical constructions of this country in which several families have their homes around a common central courtyard. There we were, the translators, an art student, Toafic’s father and me. Six years have passed, this was in […]

Angolan makamba in Maré

Photography by Patrick Marinho | Text by Rodolfo Teixeira Alves

| Brazil |

Population flows have established symbolic territories in the city of Rio de Janeiro throughout history. And there have been many but, obviously, the main flow was the trafficking of Africans, which took place between the 16th and 19th centuries, making Rio de Janeiro the largest slave port of the Americas.  In the late 19th century, […]

"Haitian migration — Brazil's opportunity to foster its solidarity with the world"

by Daniel Martins and Felipe Moulin

Was Haitian immigration in Brazil a chance to update our migration and refugee policy and governance? Paulo Abrão: Haitian migration represented a paradigmatic turning point within the Brazilian State on the topic of migration. We have come from a lengthy period of the Foreigners’ Statute, created and prepared during the military dictatorship, totally impregnated by […]

"Migration — the clearest manifestation of the challenges of humanity"

by Daniel Martins and Felipe Moulin

Is there a common understanding for justice in the phenomenon of migration? It depends on what kind of migration and where that migration is taking place. Historically, much migration research has focused on migration from the South to the North. There has been a lot of emphasis on issues of justice but the literature in […]

One swallow does not a summer make, but two…

Pablo Vergara

| BRAZIL |

Human beings, like swallows, have traveled the world in search of seasons, dreams, work, and love, since ancient times. Sometimes we migrate voluntarily, with heavy backpacks full of utopias on our backs, and the desire to discover, learn, and adventure into a new culture and new form of idiosyncrasy, and delve into the mysteries of […]

The achievements and challenges of an unprecedented project for South-South migration

Periferias 9, Justice and rights in South-South migration is launched following the MIDEQ Hub International Symposium in the city of Rio de Janeiro, held in September 2023. Migration between countries in the Global South —  a term which brings together countries mostly in non-hegemonic positions in the world economic and politics system — is one […]

Critical But Stable

Angela Makholwa

| South Africa |

excerpt of Critical But Stable (Pan Macmillan, 2021) * The Car Jabulani Khambule settled on the couch in his bachelor pad – a one-roomed cottage that had been built at the back of his mother’s house in Thokoza, Soweto. He liked to call it a cottage because that’s what people in the suburbs called back […]

Jails unprisoned

Little bird, so much to explore Touch down to rest About the bars, he sings Kelly Rhey The poem above was written by a woman deprived of liberty in a creative writing workshop at the Foz do Iguaçu Prison for Women. Kelly told her workshop peers that she was inspired to write the poem by […]

Juliana Borges

by Mario René Rodríguez Torres and Cristiane Checchia

| Brazil |

On the invisibility of the issue of prisons in Brazilian society: why is it so difficult to overcome a dehumanizing view of incarcerated people, and so easy to naturalize their suffering?  Generally, we believe in, and we sell a peaceful image of the Brazilian society, in which all groups live in harmony. This is an […]

Racialized hierarchies and blurred boundaries

Mariam Barghouti

| Palestine |

Often, the issue of Palestine comes mired with everything Israeli. Even in the academy, Palestine and Israel are examined in their relationship to each other. Yet, when we truly want to look within structural racism and oppression, we must admit that it goes deeper than Palestine and beyond Palestinians. "Exile is so strong within me, […]

"The path is short, the trajectory is long and the road is erudite" — Hédio Silva Júnior

Silvia Souza

| Brazil |

Hédio Silva Junir is a historic defender of African-matrix religions in Brazil. Silva is a renowned jurist and holds a doctorate in law, with an outsized trajectory in the practice of law in the defense of the rights of Black people and in combating racism. He is also a native of Minas Gerais, and comes […]

poetry anthology I

Achieng Duro | Ayoola Goodness | Ndaba Sibanda | Gordon B. Anjili

| Kenya | Nigeria |

Achieng Duro a Folk Song  Tar little baby don’t you cry, or the popos gonna put you to sleep tonight, and if you cry or try to fight, then their grips gonna get a bit more tight, and just as you sip into the light, Its gonna dawn on them that you had rights,  So […]

If I Manage to Die of Old Age, That’s Fine

Luis Felipe Gómez Lomelí

| Mexico | Angola |

Dying of old age, dying after the average human life expectancy, is the privilege of a small group. Dying after the average life expectancy of people in the most privileged neighborhoods of the richest countries is an illusion. According to the WHO, in 2016 the world’s average life expectancy was 72 years, and, for Africa, […]

Going Incognito

story by Winifred Òdúnóku

| Nigeria |

"Be prepared to wear a thick skin before leaving Nigeria. This place doesn't smile at non-oyinbos,", the text that Richard sent me on the previous night to my departure had read. I kept ruminating on the text and chewing each word to make absolute sense of it: be prepared to wear a thick skin before […]

Drive away fear! 

Merdi Mukore

| DR Congo | France |

A man pummeled by police for about twenty minutes. The image is brutal and some would be able to rapidly deduce that the scene unfolded in one of those countries designated as poor students in the School of Human Rights. The video, captured by a surveillance camera, shows a music producer beaten by law enforcement […]

Art from the Peripheries Depicts the African Diaspora in a Digital Environment

Mariane Del Rei

| Brazil |

Ayear since the pandemic’s onset, society has had to adjust to a new lifestyle. This is just as true of art and culture. According to a study by the Brazil chapter of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-BR), while museums’ increasing digital presence is nothing new, the trend took off during the pandemic, with online […]

Hey Progressives and Anti-racists, For Real: How About Broadening the Debate?

Bob Controversista

| Brazil |

Bancada Preta (the Black Caucus) has sought, since its foundation, to combat social inequalities and structural racism in Brazil, as well as to support the emancipation of social groups in situations of inequality through the social technology of transformative communication. Through the use of social media, Bancada Preta brings light to the debate on the […]

race, racism, territory and institutions

by Zukiswa Wanner

Today is January 19, 2021, when I start writing this text and in most of the United States of America, it is still Martin Luther King Day. Today is also the day that six years ago in Kenya, where I am writing this from, children at a primary school were teargassed by the police. Reason? […]

Go home

Itumeleng Molefi

| South Africa |

FROM: keabetswekb62@gmail.com TO: ookeditse.dabula@students.ui.edu.ng DATE: Tuesday, 12 July, 17:54 SUBJECT: Personal essay for scholarship application Hi Ookeditse I hope Ibadan is treating you well. Thank you again for agreeing to help me with this. And an even bigger THANK YOU for not telling Ofentse about this. I know that he loves me and that he […]

1342 Belvedere

R. Kihara Odanga

| Kenya | USA |

I want to say three things quickly then I shut up; because the people who live across the street have a gun, because God has nothing to say to me, because this place is trying to flay me. And so, I am tired; tired of the tiredness that I have taken up for myself because […]

Anticolonial Narratives from the Africas

| Brazil | Guinea-Bissau |

Cleber Ribeiro: What is Visto África? How did it come about and what is its goal? Vensam Iala: Visto África is a project that began in 2012, following my arrival in Brazil. I arrived in Brazil in 2010 and went straight into my studies at São Paulo State University (UNESP), in Assis, where I got […]

A Certain 36th of November

Merdi Mukore

| Congo |

Once upon a time, according to my father, there was a land where an assortment of people lived in a building without a ground floor, comparable to our plot. This assortment of people constituted a Nation-House in the same manner that the occupants of our plot make up a family. The head of our family […]

Black Self-determination Drawn From Our Roots

by Edmund Ruge

| USA |

It may surprise some of our readers to learn that issues of urban food access in the United States long predate the onset of Covid-19. Entire neighborhoods, often termed “food deserts,” stand bereft of grocery stores and markets, featuring only fast food options for kilometers on end. In such areas, the lack of access to […]

Of the Poet and the Café

Girma Fantaye

| Ethiopia |

“የንጋት ወፍ ጥሪ” There wasn’t a single day Woubshet didn’t wake up at dawn grumpy. His neighbors to the left and right of his rented room were like law-appointed alarm clocks for him. The loud prayers of the woman who just recently converted from Orthodox Christianity to ‘Pente’ to the left, and the roof-piercing music […]

Door of No Return

Natasha Omokhodion-Banda

| Zambia |

She hums. The vibrations of her voice reverberate against the walls of the room, giving way to a new sun. The penumbra on the wall reveals familiar furniture pieces as blue light slowly fills the room. Her spirit joins the soul of that in the deep of her being – causing them to float as […]

From the Lost City of Hurtlantis to the Streets of Helldorado (Or, Franco)

Rémy Ngamije

| Namibia |

I know Franco is in a fucked up place because he still refers to his ex as his girlfriend by accident when his mood is chipper. It just slips out, like a squeaky fart, and no matter how much he clenches up after that it’s already too late. Things are never the same after someone […]

Afrolit Sans Frontieres: Behind the Scenes, In Front of the Camera

by Zukiswa Wanner

| Angola | Brazil | Cameroon | Cote d'Ivoire | DR Congo |
 Egypt | Ethiopia | Eritrea | Ghana | Jamaica | Kenya | Liberia | Malawi | Martinique | Mozambique | Namibia | Nigeria | Sierra Leone | South Africa | Sudan | Uganda | US | UK | Zambia | Zimbabwe |

The Birth It’s the early days of coronavirus on the continent. In South Africa, the first known covid case is announced on March 5. Patient zero is a South African who had just returned from a vacation in Italy. A day later, I leave Johannesburg, where I had gone to attend an arts event, to […]

Daniel de Souza: Between Loves and Quilombos in the Black Amazon

Raquel Paris

| Brazil |

To tell this story, we need to go back 200 years. More precisely, we need to go back to the second half of the 18th century, when the first men, women, and children of bantu origin, coming primarily from Angola and the current Democratic Republic of the Congo, were brought to the livestock and cacao […]

Tiniguena — “This Land is Ours”

| Guinea Bissau |

Community participation, conservation, and transformation The name “Tiniguena” originates from the language of the Cassanga ethnicity and means “this land is ours.” Tiniguena is a Guinea-Bissauan nongovernmental organization founded in 1999 that is part of an emergent movement of civil organizations that aim to foster a new dynamic of effective popular participation in the construction […]

public, environmental, and democratic health

Edition 5 of Peripheries Magazine, Public, Environmental, and Democratic health, launches amid a global pandemic crisis. This moment of historic challenge comes at a time of deep transformations in the dissemination of a regressive environmental agenda and an expressive growth in global ultraconservative socio-political forces, casting a light on the limits of society’s hegemonic model. […]

Why read female philosophers?

Fábio Borges do Rosário
Marcelo José Derzi Moraes
Rafael Haddock-Lobo

| Brazil |

Why read female philosophers? Behind the initial question that the title of this text raises are a few other questions and exclamations that seem to require further thought before we enter into our speculations. First, we need to remember this as a matter of fact: there are female philosophers, and there always have been. As […]

Is it possible to build another intellectual paradigm for entrance and graduation from university?

Filomeno Lopes

| Guinea Bissau |

“Education,” says Paulo Freire, “is an act of love, and therefore an act of courage. We can’t be afraid to debate. To analyze reality. We can’t run from creative discussion without running the risk of it being a farce.” For Freire, this is because “existing is a dynamic concept. It requires an eternal dialogue between […]

Macaé Evaristo

Patrícia Santos

| Brazil |

Patrícia Santos: We’re aware of your trajectory as an educator, Secretary of Education for the Municipality of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais, in the Secadi — the Secretariat of Continued Education, Literacy, Diversity, and Inclusion — and also in the Ministry of Education at the Federal level. You also taught at the […]

Public schools: potencies and challenges

editorial PERIPHERIES 4, dedicated to the topic of public schools, features 20 contributions from Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Palestine, Paraguay and Syria , highlighting challenges and potencies in each unique context. Published in four languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French) with ten different content types — Interviews, Articles, Photo Essays, Narratives, Special Contributions, […]

“The science of nurturing” and school climates

William Corrêa de Melo

| Brazil |

The Potency of Nurturing Relationships in the Classroom The central argument is that students feel embraced by nurturing strategies, especially when there exist high educational expectations and positive stimuli (compliments, etc) and efforts toward approximation and student engagement in school processes. These positive perceptions create possibilities for relationships that favor the teaching and learning process […]

Literary conversations in Paraguay: designing paths for re-existence

Mariana Cortez

| Paraguay |

The original presence of the Guarani communities, sometimes noticeable in the habitants’ [physical] features as traits or predominant markings and, also in the language, comes together in the context of the Living Latin American Books on the Triple Border project. However, due to innumerable historical, social, and linguistic factors, Guarani communities are invisibilized and devalued. […]

Instituto Unibanco

| Brazil |

School management for equality: paths to an anti-racist education Following the ratification of the 1988 constitution, basic public education experienced a series of advances. While these may not have been as swift and intense enough to guarantee rights for all to this day, they were advances nonetheless. The example that best demonstrates this progress is […]

The interscholastic Akewí poetry slam

Clara Carolina de Oliveira Costa
Geovanna Laura Santos Januario
Isabela Kaila da Silva Cunha

Translation
Edmund Ruge

| Brazil |

Poetry in school, ideas in poetry The Akewí Poetry Slam of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, works to recognize and value peripheral and black cultural and artistic manifestations. Through poetry sustained in the civilizing values of ancestral black African societies, in orality and corporeality — reconstructed from African cultures brought by the diaspora of black slavery — […]

Traveling through diverse and creative peripheries in lisbon

Katielle Silva
Marcos Correia
Jorge Malheiro

| Portugal |

The neighborhoods of Cova da Moura and Talude Clandestine or precarious construction, occupation of private lands, and rehousing in public social housing are common themes used when discussing the neighborhoods of Cova da Moura (Amadora county) and the Military Talude neighborhood (Loures county), in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Área Metropolitana de Lisboa - AML). Such […]

Global Grace

Suzanne Clisby
Mark Johnson

| UK |

At the beginning of May, 2019 academics, activists, artists, and NGO professionals from territories across the world met together in Rio de Janeiro to share, discuss and debate the possibilities and challenges of creating pathways towards cultures of equality (Percursos Criativos para Culturas de Equidade, 7 – 9 May).  The event was co-organised by teams […]

Adriana Barbosa

Gabriele Roza

| Brazil |

"Entrepreneurship in Brazil is led by the black population. 131 years ago, Bahia’s tray vendor women bought their emancipation selling food. We have a very strong entrepreneurial vein; it is in our DNA," says Adriana Barbosa, director of the Black Fair Institute. The Business Owners in Brazil report, by Sebrae [Brazil’s support service for micro […]

Alternative experiences

EDITORIAL

Peripheries No. 3, our latest issue, is dedicated to the alternative experiences of the global peripheries, and gathers 21 contributions from 15 countries around the world. Published in four languages (Portuguese, English, Spanish, French) and divided into six editorial categories—interviews, articles, narratives, “born of the periphery,” book reviews, and features—Peripheries gives space to the differentiated […]

Miguel de Barros

Raquel Paris

| Guinea Bissau |

Miguel, I would like to hear where you come from, and I thought we could begin with you speaking a bit about your childhood and about your youth, because we know that it's in these moments that there's usually a schism or some major event. Miguel de Barros: I will not speak about myself, I’ll […]

Carolina Maria de Jesus, an author for the present

Tom Farias

| Brazil |

Reflecting on the written memory of Minas de Gerais author Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) requires care and effort. For someone that barely knows or has never heard of the author of the book Quarto de despejo–diário de uma favelada, published in August of 1960, we must start at the beginning. Carolina Maria de Jesus […]

Sofia Djama and the movement to retake algerian cinema

Daniel Stefani
Gabrielly Pereira

| Algeria |

Sofia, thank you for being here at the International University of the Peripheries in Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Could you introduce yourself? However you like.   Sofia Djama: I’m Algerian, my name is Sofia Djama and I was born in Oran, which is a large city in western Algeria by the sea. I grew up […]

State Geopolitics and Quilombo Territory in the 21st Century

by Jorge Barbosa

| Brazil |

by Diosmar M. Santana Filho Paco Editorial publishing, 2018. 260p A geopolítica do Estado e o território quilombola no século XXI (Paco Editorial, 2018) was born of the Masters research undertaken by the geographer Diosmar Santana Filho at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). The book in question is thus the fruit of a well-planted […]

Redes da Maré - WOW as a possibility for uniting female power in the contemporary world

Eliana Sousa Silva

| Brazil |

The WOW - Women of the World Festival is an initiative created by British Artistic Director Jude Kelly during her years as Creative Director at Southbank Centre (one of the largest cultural centers in the world, based in London), where she worked for over a decade. Since its launch in 2010, WOW has aimed to […]

Interview with Marisa Matias

by Tatiana Moura

| Portugal |

"I have been Marisa’s friend for a long time and I know well the conviction with which she personifies the maxim of “the personal is political.” If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t be the one here. And just as Marisa knows it, so too do the millions of Portuguese men and women that have felt […]

The Molenbeekois and their Going Beyond a Stigma

Johan Leman

| BELGIUM |

Can people who live in a stigmatized periphery, starting from their own current practice, find the force to realize their emancipation? Can they transform and transcend a negative brand that weighs on their environment and on themselves, to their own benefit and also to a better image in the outside world? Not all peripheries and […]